TORONTO: Seth Hardy sees more than his fair share of malware in any given day. Hardy, who works for The Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, tracks security attacks on vulnerable non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In a talk delivered at the SecTor security conference here, Hardy revealed that despite myths to the contrary, Mac users are being specifically targeted by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).

"The question 'Are Mac users no longer safe' is a trick question, because you were not safe to begin with," Hardy told the capacity audience.

He explained that The Citizen Lab looks at targeted threats against human rights organizations. As such they have somewhat limited visibility, though the attacks he has seen are highly targeted. "Citizen Lab's visibility is deep but not wide. But we are getting malware directly from sources that receive it along with the context of how they were delivered," he said. At a high level, Hardy defined APT as "something we weren't able to see, block or deal with."